


Who You're Thinking Of

by Schwoozie



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Bethyl Week, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Funeral Home, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-19
Updated: 2014-07-19
Packaged: 2018-02-09 14:10:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1985898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schwoozie/pseuds/Schwoozie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn't want this, because Daryl Dixon doesn't get this kind of thing. </p><p>A moment in the funeral home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who You're Thinking Of

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by khaleesibetch's wonderful "so i’ll remain within your aim".
> 
> Written (sort of) for the prompt Memory.

_“No chance, no way, I won't say it, uh oh—“_

“The fuck you doing?”

Beth turns from where she's—Christ, she's arranging wildflowers in a vase on the hall table, all done up in a frilly apron and hair piled on her head and fuck if it isn't the sexiest thing Daryl's ever seen. She shoots him a brilliant smile, then turns back to primping the makeshift bouquet. And here he is in the doorway, walker guts spilling all down his front and a pair of rabbits dangling from his belt, muddying up the clean floor with his clomping boots.

 _Like a fucking horror movie_ , he thinks.

“There were already flowers here, figured we might as well have fresh ones.” She buries her nose in the bundle, inhaling deeply. “Come smell them.”

“I'd just sneeze all over ya.”

“I didn't know you were allergic.” Beth gives them one last sniff before trailing him into the kitchen. He drops the rabbits on the kitchen table and snags the jelly from the pantry, dropping into a chair with a grunt. Beth perches on the edge of her seat across from him, resting her chin on her dainty little wrists.

“There's lots you don't know about me,” he grumbles.

“Like what?” she asks, grinning.

Daryl shrugs uncomfortably. “Y'know, stuff.”

“Tell me something.”

“Like what?”

“I don't know.” She has the string of her apron up on the table (and where would she find that fucking thing anyhow?) and is fiddling with it, looping it over and over her tiny fingers. “Something you've never told anyone else.”

Daryl raises an eyebrow. “Think a lotta yourself, don't'cha, Greene?”

“Why yes I do.” She smiles, smug, teasing. “Come on,” she says, tossing back a loose strand of hair. “Tell me.”

Daryl shrugs, turning the jar over in his hands. “Ain't much to tell,” he says, unscrewing the top to plunge his fingers in.

Before he reaches the jelly there's a hand on his wrist. He looks up, dumbfounded, into Beth's exasperated eyes.

“D'you even know where those hands have been?” she chides.

“I didn't stick them up my ass or nothin'!”

Beth rolls her eyes. “No, just into a few rotting corpses. Lemme get you a spoon.”

“Aren't you the little housewife,” he says before he can stop himself.

She just rolls her eyes at him over her shoulder as she digs into the drawer, trying to find a clean spoon. She pulls one out in triumph and hands it to him across the table.

Before he can grab it, she pulls it away. “First you gotta tell me a secret.”

“I didn't want the fucking spoon anyhow!”

“I ain't letting you eat with your fingers, Mr. Dixon.” She raises an eyebrow. “Wanna wake up with poison ivy stuffed in your drawers?”

The thought of Beth Greene anywhere near his drawers gets him more riled than it should. Screw 35-odd years hobnobbing with the wrong end of the law; a few weeks with Beth and his poker face is going to be flawless.

“You're a sadistic little bitch, you know that?”

“Watch your mouth,” she says good-naturedly.

“No,” he says, petulant. They stare each other down for a few more moments before Daryl snorts, rolling his eyes. “Fine, fine, I'll tell ya, now gimme the damn spoon.”

Beth smiles primly and proffers the utensil, which he snatches out of the air and promptly buries in the jelly, shoving it into his mouth. It's just as grainy as the one he had on their first night here, but it's food that he didn't have to work for, so he doesn't mind a bit.

She's looking at him expectantly, hands folded in front of her. “Well?” she prods.

Daryl rolls his eyes, thinking. The song she was singing when he walked in is still swirling around his head, and he groans internally even as he opens his mouth to speak.

“I used to sneak into Disney movies.”

“What, when you were a kid?”

Daryl's cheeks redden. “No,” he mumbles, swallowing another spoonful.

She's grinning and he's flushing and fuck if he doesn't get himself into the worst situations.

“I snuck out to see the Saw movies.”

He stares at her incredulously. “ _You_?”

She rolls her eyes. “Yes, _me_. Maggie and Daddy didn't want me to see 'em, but I thought, screw that.” She fiddles with her apron strings, looking down. “Guess it's a good thing I saw them, huh? Maybe it prepared me for all this.”

“That ain't what did it,” Daryl says.

“What did then?” She's looking at him with her big blue eyes, luminous like a million lanterns. He feels like he could melt right off his chair.

“Dunno,” he says, scraping the spoon at the bottom of the jar, avoiding her eyes. “Some people just got it in them. Maybe it ain't what you snuck out for, but that you did at all.”

She tilts her head and looks at him, smiling with just her eyes and the corner of her mouth.

He doesn't want to kiss that mouth. He doesn't want to touch her face with just the pads of his fingers, trailing from chin to temple. He doesn't want those eyes on him, like that, just like that, from now to the end of his days.

He doesn't want it, cause Daryl Dixon doesn't get that kind of thing.

He scrapes out one last spoonful and holds it out, waving it a little in the air. “Here ya go. A nice scoop of brains.”

She grins and pops her mouth open, and after a moment's hesitation he slips the spoon inside. Her lips close around the neck, pink and plump, and she looks at him with her crinkled eyes as she swallows it down, running her fingers over her lips to clean them.

“Hmm,” she says, smacking her lips. Daryl's hand drops limply to the table. Two circles of red bloom across her cheeks, and she avoids his eyes. “Not bad for the end of the world, huh?”

“Nah. It ain't.”

She smiles again, and sighs, standing with a flap of her apron. “Guess I better go check on the water situation. I set up some stills on the porch, if you wanna see if I did it right.”

“A'right. Lemme just clean these,” he motions to the rabbits, “I'll be there in a sec.”

“Good.” She hesitates, then rounds the table and kisses him on the cheek, resting a hand on his shoulder as she does. He meets her eyes as she backs away, then turns with a fleeting smile and leaves the room.

He sits there for a few long minutes, breathing in and out, trying to quiet the fluttering in his chest. Outside, Beth begins to sing. He closes his eyes and listens to her voice drifting in through the open window, clean and clear like bluebirds on the wind.

_“When you gonna own up that you got, got, got it bad...”_


End file.
